Articles

How ERP Improves eCommerce Management and Performance

An integrated ERP eCommerce solution helps retailers improve customer service and reduce costs.

ERP for eCommerce: The Benefits of Using an ERP Solution to Manage eCommerce Channels

If you research the buying habits of consumers around the world, you’ll discover something you probably already know: shopping online—with its click-of-a-button and deliver-directly-to-my-home benefits—continues to gain in popularity year after year. Insider Intelligence reports that global online retail sales will exceed $7 trillion by 2025. That’s trillion with a ‘T’, which means you and your eCommerce business have a potentially exciting future ahead of you.

Why potentially and not definitively?

With more than 26 million eCommerce sites worldwide, you’re not lacking for competitors—each of whom are diligently working to attract the customers you want for yourself. Thankfully, you can gain the advantage over your retail rivals by utilizing an integrated ERP eCommerce solution, which provides the following business-enhancing benefits:

Improved customer service.
Reduced operational load and costs.
Increased visibility across the customer journey.
Greater generated sales and profits.

What is ERP?

ERP stands for “enterprise resource planning,” and ERP solutions are software systems that act as single, centralized databases of business-wide data. They are designed to seamlessly integrate with third-party applications, including world-class ecommerce portals, like Shopify and BigCommerce.

Why Should Ecommerce Businesses Consider Ecommerce ERP Software?

Ecommerce solutions provide prolific customer information regarding preferences, behaviors, and interactions, as well as shopping cart behaviors (e.g., abandonment and conversions). An ERP system links and synchronizes departmental information, including sales, accounting, supply chain, and more. Together, they provide retailers with complete, end-to-end pictures of their businesses.

Key features you should look for in an ecommerce ERP solution include the following:

Commerce Connectors: Seamless integrations with leading ecommerce platforms, like Amazon, BigCommerce, and Shopify, provide real-time, bi-directional flow of data, automated production information syncing, and support for B2C, B2B, and D2C sales.

Inventory Management: Managing inventory with an ERP system for ecommerce ensures streamlined item management, powerful replenishment for automated orders, quality traceability with lot and serial control, and flexible location management.

Order Management: Integrated order management enables ecommerce businesses to reduce order times, simplify pricing and discounts, save time with automation, and understand their costs.

Warehouse Management System: Extend order and inventory management capabilities with a warehouse management solution that offers various picking options, barcoded pick lists, packing automation, shipment creation, shipping labels/documentation, customer notifications, stock turnover data, cart and tote data, role-based dashboards, and more.

Point of Sale: Manage all sales transactions from a single order screen with real-time inventory and cash register reconciliation reporting, touch-screen compatibility, and connectivity to cash registers, barcode scanners, receipt printers, and credit card terminals.

CRM: Capture all marketing, sales, billing, finance, and customer data in one solution while eliminating manual processes and improving the customer experience (CX).

In addition to these key features, you should determine if the ERP system you choose can handle multi-channel sales and omnichannel operations (it should) and if the integration between your ERP and ecommerce platforms is secure (it better be). And you should consider ERP solutions that are based in the cloud, which takes the ERP ecommerce integration a step further.

Specifically, cloud-based ERP solutions allow you and your team to manage orders, returns, inventory, and more from any location. Cloud ERP solutions also provide you with any-time access to your critical business information, which is vitally important when you’re managing a 24/7 ecommerce website and striving to meet the needs of customers who demand immediate and accurate service.

“I was at dinner with a customer recently who asked if we had any availability on a part. With Acumatica, I was able to pull up our inventory on my phone, see exactly what we had, and let them know. It’s very nice to have that web capability..” – Ryan Brown, CEO, xByte Technologies

Implementing Ecommerce ERP Solutions

As with any large project, an ERP implementation takes time, money, and effort. How well you manage the implementation and its requirements depends on which ecommerce ERP solution you choose.

It’s vital that you select ecommerce ERP software that provides the key features noted previously, gives a clear breakdown of costs, and comes with a vendor or partner who is willing—and able—to guide you through the implementation journey. This guidance should include transparency on critical information, such as how long the implementation will take (which depends on your organization’s size, its complexity, and the type of ERP system you select), if training is affordable or even complimentary, and if support continues after go live.

Once you’ve found the ecommerce ERP system that best suits you, you’ll be one step closer to benefitting from the power of an industry-specific solution.

"When we switched to Acumatica, it really created a seamless experience for our consumer, because our data accuracy, our inventory, and the way we communicated with our customers was in one spot and created a single source of truth."

Amanda Datte, CFO

Clive Coffee

Bringing the Power of ERP Solutions to Your eCommerce Channel

The following three pillars represent a major benefit of an ERP solution for your eCommerce business.

Building a Stronger Experience

In retail, customers are the lifeblood of any business, which means the customer experience (CX) should be at the top your priority list. Your goal is to encourage people to become—and remain—loyal customers, and there are two main factors that will help you succeed: the quality of your product (along with the price) and the quality of your customer service (before, during, and after the purchase).

The value and importance of these factors is borne out by HubSpot research, which reveals that 93% of customers who receive excellent customer service will make a repeat purchase. To ensure you’re providing the service customers expect, employ HubSpot’s “4 points of leverage in the customer lifecycle”: understand your customers’ goals, simplify the purchase process, invest in your customers’ success (e.g., gather feedback and provide a FAQ page), and use your customers as a source of referrals.

Fortunately, an integrated ERP eCommerce management solution can assist you with these customer-focused initiatives. With customer and business data at your fingertips, you’ll know what customers want and at what price range, enabling you to cater to your prime customer base. In addition, most ERP solutions provide self-service customer portals, which allows you and your team to engage and communicate with customers during every touchpoint of the customer journey.

Reducing Costs and Improving Operational Performance

ECommerce ERP solutions increase visibility into your operations, alerting you to any ongoing or potential pain points before they become major roadblocks. Real-time data from your customer-facing and back-office systems is available through personalized dashboards, putting you in control of your financial health and your order, inventory, shipment, and return statuses—reducing operational costs and improving overall performance.

Greater Accuracy and Automation

Finally, an integrated ERP ecommerce solution automates and connects your business processes, including order fulfillment, bank reconciliations, overall financial management and reporting (e.g., General Ledger, AR/AP, Cash Management, Tax Management, Project Accounting, etc.), and beyond. Manual data entry, which is fraught with human error, becomes a mere memory, and inventory accuracy becomes a reality.

For instance, if you have multiple sales channels pulling from a single inventory, you can manage all orders and inventory allocations within the ERP solution. The information, which is automatically recorded in the ERP system, transmits immediately and accurately to your ecommerce software, making omnichannel operations a breeze.

Hear from Our Customers

“Our technology costs are now 33 percent cheaper and we have 10 times the functionality. Our organic traffic is up 45 percent, and we are selling more because we are off NetSuite and on Acumatica. We’re implementing actions and a forum on our site, which we couldn’t do before. We wanted it for years and years, and there is a long list of marketing things we can do now that we couldn’t before.” – Dave Munson, CEO/Founder, Saddleback Leather Co.

“We have dashboards that show orders printed but not shipped and are greater than a day old. We can build views that identify potential issues before they become a problem. We now have the data visibility and accessibility to identify our core customers, understand their challenges, and support them with tailor made gardening solutions. We can do all of this at scale now by leveraging cutting edge technology thanks to Acumatica.” – Ethan Platt, President & Co-Owner, American Meadows

“With everything built-in, our invoices now directly populate into our revenue and onto our P&L, and executives can pull information at any point in time. They can see how profitable we are this month. They can see what we’re purchasing. They can have many questions answered at any point in time.” – Amanda Datte, CFO, Clive Coffee

Our eCommerce Edition

Acumatica’s Retail Management Software provides you with a flexible, affordable, and mobile cloud platform that seamlessly unites with web stores, POS devices, and other essential third-party applications while offering native integrations with Acumatica’s Sales, CRM, Financials, Fulfillment, and Inventory applications. Data flows uninterrupted between every application, providing updated, accurate information on a true omnichannel platform.

FAQs

Can ERP systems adapt to the growth of an ecommerce business?

One of the major benefits of ERP systems is their ability to scale with businesses as they grow. ERP systems are designed to flex with differing business needs, whether that’s adding/reducing applications and modules, onboarding new employees quickly and easily, buying/merging with new companies and adding them to the ERP system, or all the above.

What is the cost associated with implementing a retail ERP system for ecommerce, and what is the expected ROI?

The cost of an ERP system is directly connected to which ERP system you choose. Some ERP systems charge a per user fee, while others—like Acumatica—allow unlimited users at one low price. The number of applications you implement, your transaction volumes, and the deployment option you choose will also affect your overall cost.

As to ROI, this is calculated by comparing the cost of the system to the direct and indirect benefits you enjoy over a five-to-ten-year period. These benefits can differ depending on the business and industry, but typical savings include reduced overall operating expenses, increased inventory turnover or billable hours, accelerated response for returns/recalls, and minimized accounts receivable days outstanding.

There are other benefits that are less easily quantified but still valuable. They include increased productivity (due to the ERP solution’s easy-to-use technology and centralized documentation), improved staff retention, and the ability to make faster, more strategic decisions with increased visibility across the organization and access to updated data—anytime, anywhere.

What ongoing support and maintenance services are provided with a retail ERP system for ecommerce?

As with the cost of an ERP system, ongoing support and maintenance services depend on which ERP system you choose. For example, Acumatica provides personalized support through an international network of experienced resellers. You’ll be matched with a local partner, who is an expert in your market and industry and who will be available before, during, and after the ERP implementation.

Can retail ERP help ecommerce businesses with demand planning and forecasting?

Demand planning and forecasting begin with lots of data. With an ERP system for ecommerce, retailers have the historical, internal, and external data (e.g. sales orders, materials requirements, forecasts, etc.) they need to predict what their customers will want and effectively optimize inventory levels, which helps reduce stockout or overstocking scenarios. And this data is available at their fingertips and in real time from a single, comprehensive, integrated solution.

Success Stories

Saddleback Leather

"I had a million ideas but all of them were impossible with Oracle NetSuite. Now, I sleep, dream and hope - three things I was not able to do with NetSuite."

Dave Munson, Founder and CEO

Saddleback Leather

American Meadows

"I don’t know how we would have handled the initial Covid-19 outbreak without Acumatica. We were able to make the switch to be fully remote within a few days."

Ethan Platt, President & Co-Owner

American Meadows

Featured resources

Whitepaper

The Best eCommerce Starts with Tighter Integration

eBook

Retailers and eCommerce Companies Grow with Acumatica

General eBook

Roadmap to eCommerce Success

View all resources

See what’s possible when you have a future-proof ERP platform that truly puts customers first.

Request a demo